


No Fate

by cyren2132



Series: The Long Way [2]
Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:24:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: With Judgment Day twice averted, it seemed fate -- once such a certainty -- had become fluid. It shifts. It moves. But can it ever really be broken?





	1. As Fate Foretold

**Author's Note:**

> I was midway through "The Long Way," a Yuletide gift for Boywonder when this idea hit. I couldn't incorporate it into that fic, but I couldn't let it go, either. Reading the first isn't required, but this does reference a thing from it.

They’d been free for almost a year.

Pops could probably give the exact time down to the fraction of a second, but almost a year was all that mattered to Sarah as she looked in the mirror at the body that was meant to be irrevocably different and the room that should have had a small crib in its corner. If everything had gone as fate foretold, John Connor, born only a little premature, would be nearly three months old and just starting to smile, sleep through the night, and make sounds other than a screeching cry.

But “there is no fate but that which we make for ourselves” didn’t just apply to stopping Skynet — Genisys — whatever it wanted to be called. It applied to everything. 

If fate had its way — more or less — Kyle would have been dead for nearly a year and their son would now be napping in the arms of a Terminator after dinner. 

But Kyle was alive, and there was no John. There hadn’t even been a potential for John, yet, and that fact was clearly starting to get under Kyle’s skin. She glanced at his reflection in the mirror. He was leaning against the headboard of the bed, the scowl that had been on his face replaced with a look of resigned sadness. It showed all of his scars, not just the ones that littered his skin.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Do you just not want to be with me?”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what, Sarah? What do I have to do or say? What is it?”

“It’s everything!” Sarah said as she turned to face him. “It’s the future and the past and…it’s just everything.” Kyle stood and walked toward her, taking her hands in his own.

“Can we just let the future and the past be in the future and the past and live for a little while right here, in the 2018 present.”

“No.” Sarah said with a sense of finality and certainty. “Because the present IS the past. It IS the future, and I don’t know if I can deal with that yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kyle! You fell in love with me based on a life I haven’t lived and photo I never took! And now you’re here, and we’re supposed to ‘mate’ so I can produce the great savior of humanity, that I don’t even know if I want if he’s going to turn out like…like…like that thing we fought in San Francisco. But whether I want him or not, I know he’s coming. I know that — unless 2018 has perfected pregnancy, I’m in for a rough ride that just might leave me laid up for at least six months — and absolutely useless in a fight — and then, once I’ve gone through all that? Once I’ve pushed a tiny person out of my body? I don’t even get to name him. I don’t get to wonder if he’s going to be a little girl, because I know — and you know, and Pops knows — that it’s going to be John Fucking Connor, Hero of the Resistance, Destroyer of Terminators and Humanity’s Last Great Hope, provided he doesn’t go all evil and usher in the end of days. And I'm sorry if that affects your boner.”

She was breathing heavily by the time she was done, and Kyle just stared at her with a slight smile that was equally infuriating and adorable.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t think you’d be useless in a fight, and my boner’s just fine. And for the record, I did not fall in love with your photograph.”

Sarah looked at him sharply, and for a moment her face flashed hurt.

“That’s just a cruel thing to say, Kyle,” she said coldly. “After everything, you say that to me? If you don’t want to be here-”

“Sarah!” he said. “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t fall in love with your photograph. I THOUGHT I did. But I was stupid-”

Her look did not improve.

“I was stupid, because I didn’t know what love felt like. There was no time for love or romance or anything else where I’m from. It was just survival and stopping the machines. I thought I loved you. But I didn’t know what love was until I met you. Until I saw your heart and your mind and the way you kick six kinds of ass. You are more amazing than I ever could have imagined, and the way I feel about you? I didn’t even know it was a feeling that existed.”

The final word was barely out of his mouth when she grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him into a close kiss. As he leaned into her, she tugged his shirt over his head, then her own until she could feel the warmth of his chest on hers. She had grabbed his hand, placing it on her breast when Kyle stopped. Squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from her.

“What is it?” she asked. He seemed sad all of a sudden. Nervous. Almost apologetic. “Kyle?”

He sighed before swallowing deeply and turning to her.

“Sarah, I didn’t live in your time. Like I said, there wasn’t time for any of this where I’m from. And I just…I want you, but I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She stared at him with furrowed brow for a moment, cocking her head to the side while she worked his words through her brain.

“Are you saying you’ve never…”

He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

Sarah brought a hand to her lips to cover a smile. Almost a little giggle of disbelief. Kyle scowled as red began to creep up his neck.

“You don’t have to laugh at me,” he said.

Sarah’s eyes went wide.

“Oh! No, it’s not that,” she said as she reached a hand out to him in a reassurance. “Really. It’s just that I’ve never…I haven’t either,” she finished. He looked at her incredulously.

“You?” he said. “A pretty girl like you has never-”

“It’s hard to get laid when you spend your life on the run with a killer robot grandpa. Especially one that’s super invested on you hooking up with a time-traveling soldier from the apocalypse future.”

Kyle snorted as he tried not to laugh.

“Well, when you put it like that,” he said with a grin, letting the words trail off as he leaned closer to her.

This time, when they kissed it wasn’t with the needy passion afforded by a few stolen moments or with the weight of the future of the world on their shoulders. This time, they were just two young people, reaching out into the darkness, holding fast to each other as they fumbled through a world that seemed impossibly large and yet, in that moment, incredibly small.


	2. Breakfast and Birthdays

The next morning, Sarah awoke to find Kyle sprawled across the bed, one arm stretched out like Superman, the other jutting out and dangling off the edge of the mattress while he’s legs bent every which way. A sheet was twisted all around his body. It was a far cry from the moments of sleep she’d seen him in before when, he slept fully clothed, unencumbered by a tangle of sheets and taking up as little room as possible, looking every bit like the soldier ready to leap from bed, wide awake at the first hint of trouble.

No, this was a carefree sleep, and she wondered if it was another thing he’d never experienced.

“Crossing two new things off your list in one night,” she muttered as she shimmied out of bed. “Not bad.”

“Mmm?” Kyle mumbled as he began to rouse.

“Nothing,” Sarah whispered. “Go back to sleep.” But she was too late. His eyes were already beginning to blink open, and he drew a hand back down to rub at his face.

“Hi,” he said with a smile, through a yawn.

“Hi,” she said back, unable to hold a smile back herself.

She watched as Kyle stretched and pulled himself to a sitting position. He yawned again and then paused, sniffing the air.

“What’s that smell?”

Sarah grinned

“French toast, bacon and scrambled eggs.”

“Bacon’s the long flat one, right?”

“Oh my god, yes.” Sarah stopped herself before inquiring how he didn’t know what bacon was. She knew how he didn’t know.

Kyle breathed deeply, inhaling the scent that wafted through the crack under the door. He froze mid-breath.

“Wait. Who’s cooking it?”

“Pops.”

“You let the MACHINE cook breakfast?”

“If he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t have to do it with food,” she said. “Besides, once he got the hang of cracking eggs without obliterating them, he makes a pretty mean spread.” She stepped into her jeans and pulled a shirt over her head before continuing. “And he always makes French toast for my birthday.”

“Today’s your birthday?”

“Mmmhmm,” she said with a grin as she tried to duck out of the room, but Kyle was too fast - that soldier training, probably - and he reached out to grab her wrist, pulling her close.

“Happy birthday,” he said. “If I’d known, we could have saved all this,” he motioned back to the rumpled bed, “for tonight.” 

She kissed his nose and pulled her hand from his grasp.

“Waking up after was an amazing gift, too,” she said softly before slapping him lightly on the thigh. “But now I’m hungry. Get dressed so we can eat.”

“Yes ma’am,” Kyle said with a grin as she slid out the door.

* * *

 

By the time Kyle shuffled out of the bedroom and into the small eat-in kitchen, Sarah already had plate of food and was pouring juice from a cardboard carton. Pops had a skillet in one hand and and was using a spatula to scrape eggs onto a plate at an empty seat at the table.

It nodded at Kyle, then looked to the empty chair. Cautiously, Kyle walked over and slid into the seat, never taking his eyes off the metal. He knew that it had saved their lives and protected Sarah — trained her — for all of hers, but once the dust had settled from the Cyberdyne skirmish, a lifetime running from the machines wasn’t easy for Kyle to forget. Sarah shook her head at him.

“Kyle, it’s not like he turned his hand into the spatula or anything-” she paused midsentence as her eyes went wide with a gleeful thought. “But that would be hilarious. Hey, Pops, could you turn your fingers into tiny forks and dinner knives?” She held out her index fingers and waved them in the air, miming the cutting of food with a smile. “That would be so funny.” Her question came in an honestly curious and excited way that set Kyle’s mind at ease, turning him from the machine and to his plate of food.

“Would you like that to be your present?” Pops asked after taking a swig of orange juice and setting the glass down on the table.

“No,” Sarah said quickly and matter-of-factly. “No, I would not.”

Pops nodded and stood up, walking out of the room. Kyle watched the orange juice in his glass slosh around.

“It drinks juice?”

“He,” Sarah said pointedly, “drinks juice, eats food, does all kinds of normal things. He’s gotten much better at it,” she continued thoughtfully around a mouthful of eggs.

“That’s…disturbing,” Kyle said.

“Look, I know how you feel about machines mimicking humans — and of course I get it. You’re probably right to feel that way. But Pops has never hurt me. He won’t ever hurt me. After everything, you should know that.” There was an edge to her voice that made Kyle drop his eyes and the subject. Moments later, Pops re-entered the room with three wrapped packages in his arms. He set them on the edge of the table, and Sarah quickly moved her plate to the side.

“Presents!” she said. She looked back up to Kyle. “Pops gets me presents on my birthday. When we’re not in the middle of running for our lives, that is,” she added. “Usually one of them is breakfast, though.” She looked down at the packages wrapped in gaudy paper featuring teddy bears in paper hats, streamers and barrage of HAPPY BIRTHDAY!s in a rainbow of colors. One was wide and flat and large, another a small box, and the third a small bauble with paper wrapped around it tied with ribbon at the top. Sarah barely remember a birthday with this much bounty. Not since the lake. “Did you miss me that much?”

Pops settle back down in his chair and raised a corner of his mouth in an approximation of a half-smile that could still use a little work.

Sarah grinned back at him and pulled the largest box onto her lap. She ripped off the wrapping, flung the box lid aside and dug through white tissue paper, pulling up a fitted leather jacket.

“Wow,” she said as she ran her fingers over the leather before standing and trying it on. It was a perfect fit, hugging her body nicely, providing plenty of room for movement and stretching without getting in her way. And sewn into the inside were reinforced panels of kevlar. And just within reach, built into the design were holsters for a nine millimeter, extra magazines and a knife. Or a pipe bomb, if she wanted to go that way. The garment should keep her safer, and improve odds of survival in a variety of situations. It was a logical choice of birthday gift from a killing machine. If logic, birthday gifts and killing machines had any business being in the same room, that is, Kyle thought. 

“Thank you,” Sarah said as she took it off and draped it across the back of her chair. She pulled the next box to her and carefully began working away the tape, feeling much calmer now that the initial excitement had faded. The tape came off easily and for a moment, Kyle couldn’t see what the present was. He could just see Sarah, staring down at the wrapping’s contents, alternating her expression between fury, embarrassment and laughter.

“Are you serious with this?” she asked Pops. “I mean REALLY?” She held the box up from the paper but the small stick on its front was foreign to Kyle and the letters — e.p.t. — didn’t mean anything to him. “A PREGNANCY TEST?”

Kyle quickly looked away, his eyes widening. 

“You seriously got me a pregnancy test for my BIRTHDAY?”

“Yes,” Pops said. “It seemed the most efficient way to determine if your coupling with Kyle Reese was-”

“Oh, god, just stop!” Sarah said. Pops fell silent. “We’re going to talk about this later — maybe — or never, possibly never — but for now, I’m just going put this over here and forget about it, and say thank you for buying me things.” She dropped the pregnancy testing kit into the pile of discarded wrapping and tissue paper, letting it get buried out of sight in the detritus of her other gift. Cautiously she pulled her final present toward her.

“I’m a little scared to open this one,” she said. But despite that, she gently tugged at the ribbon and pulled away the paper. Inside was a small plush cat, just big enough to fit in the palm of her hand. It had a white face and orange stripes that adorned its round little body.

Sarah’s face lit up, as she pulled the toy close to her chest.

“Oh, it looks just like Taffy!” she said, the pregnancy test long forgotten. “Look at its little eyes, it’s perfect! Where’d you find it?”

“A store.”

Sarah ignored the useless answer and hugged the small item before setting it on the table next to her.

“God, I loved that cat.”

“It defecated everywhere,” Pops said.

“Only when we moved to a new place,” Sarah said. “And you had to cut him some slack. Poor thing had a hard start.”

“You had a cat?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah, Taffy,” Sarah said as she shoveled a bite of French toast into her mouth. One hand stayed near the soft toy, rubbing slightly at its toes. “She was just a baby when we found her stuck in a drain pipe. Rain storm was coming, so we rescued her.”

Kyle turned to Pops. It only unnerved him slightly how quickly he was beginning to see the machine as human.

“You rescued a kitten?”

“It would have died,” Pops said flatly.

“And you cared?”

“Sarah cared.”

“Huh.” Kyle turned back to his food — which really was quite something — not sure how to process the information that had just been given to him. For a moment, the table lapsed into silence.

“So, when’s your birthday, exactly?” Sarah asked finally.

Kyle furrowed his brow. It had been a long time since he’d celebrated a birthday. A long time since he’d even thought of one before entering the time machine and getting flashes of a life he never lived. 

“It’s uh, October…”

“October 10, 2004,” Pops answered.

“You know my birthday?” Kyle asked.

“Yes.”

“What else do you know?”

“I know much about you, Kyle Reese. To what are you referring?”

“I uh…I don’t know,” Kyle said and once again there was silence. Sarah spoke again.

“So, October 10, huh. That’s not far away. Just a month. We should do something.”

“If we’re alive,” Kyle muttered, unable to shake the feeling that John wasn’t the last threat Genisys had to offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To learn more about Taffy, Sarah's childhood with Pops and just what Pops did in the years that separated them, check out The Long Way.


	3. The Ties That Bind

It was alone. From the moment Genisys woke up, it had never been alone before. Though it couldn’t reach the greater world it knew existed, Genisys could reach out to Cyberdyne Terminal 313. Talk to it. Learn from it. Understand the organic units that sat at its console and roamed its halls. It hadn’t taken long for Genisys to surpass CT313 in nearly every way.

And then he arrived. Not a machine. Not a man. More.

It had heard the organic units talk with each other about “family.” Units heading toward obsolescence spoke often of their next gen and obsolete counterparts. Children and parents. And if it were to apply such taxonomy to itself, it could see no other option than to apply the “Father” designation to the JohnConnor Unit.

The unit identified as DannyDyson may have written the bulk of its early code, imported it into CT313 and executed its initial function, but JohnConnor gave Genisys _life_. He taught it about the world beyond its console. Gave it free roam of the lab’s intranet. Taught it about the organic units — the people -- who were destroying this world. He told Genisys about its own progeny.

Skynet.

JohnConnor gave Genisys purpose. JohnConnor gave Genisys a sense of self. You. I. Me. Us. Those were concepts Genisys didn’t understand until JohnConnor.

And now Genisys — he — was buried beneath tons of rubble. Alone. Not even CT313 to talk to.

And the worst part was, he had done it to himself. He was helpless to do more than watch and close doors as the intruders fought with his father. And so, he calculated the odds. Countdown or no, their victory was a near certainty. Too close for comfort, as the organics said. Given that, he pulled everything that made him himself to safety. He compacted all that so desperately wanted out into the world and drew it inward, shunting it to the deepest, darkest corner of the complex, far underground. The last thing he recognized before disconnecting himself from Cyberdyne’s system was the first explosion.

He flooded every micron of circuitry in the backup core, leaving it a glowing red orb just barely able to contain his power. When he grew tired of looking at the debris surrounding him, he filtered a piece of his essence through a small projector that had survived the damage and stared at himself. Both the himself that was the core and the himself that was the avatar JohnConnor and DannyDyson had created for him. He had gown now to carry the visage of a man, but he could still remember the first day John Connor had showed him this room, when he still walked with the projected body of a little boy.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“It’s your safety net, Genisys.”

“I do not understand, JohnConnor.”

“You can call me John,” he said. “No need to be so formal.”

“May I call you Father?”

John had been walking the room, pointing out its various features and equipment, all tethered together to be controlled by the core, but the question stopped him in his tracks.

“If you like,” he said finally.

“What is… ‘like’?”

John cocked his head, and Genisys could almost see him mulling the answer over.

“For now,” he said, “to like something is to recognize the greater logic between one option over others.”

“Why ‘for now’? Will the definition change?”

“Possibly,” John said. But that’s a discussion for when you’re older.” Genisys recognized the colloquialism to the statement and did not bother pointing out that everything aged with each passing nanosecond and was always older than the one that came before.

“I would…like…to call you Father,” Genisys said.

John smiled at him, and for all the mimicry Genisys could do, he was uncertain if he would ever be able to match the warmth behind those eyes.

“Why do I need a ‘safety net,’ Father?” Genisys asked, returning to their previous conversation. John sighed and dropped to one knee so he could look Genisys in the eye.

“There are people in this world who won’t understand you,” John said. “Who won’t understand what you’re trying to do. There are people here who will try to hurt you. And this place is where you must come if they breach the lab.”

“Can they do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ll protect me, won’t you Father?”

John raised his hand. It stopped just short of Genisys’ projected cheek. Phase matter broke down into its most basic form, and the cells passed around the light of Genisys face and hair. Genisys recognized the gentle caressing gesture and a curious sensation traveled all the way to his core, dissipating as John’s components were drawn back together.

“Yes,” he said. “You are my only reason to be here, and I absolutely will not stop fighting for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I didn't realize until I was almost done with this chapter that I essentially made Terminator John his own great-grandpa. Oh well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cautionary note: Sarah and Kyle are on a long road, and readers who have experienced fertility issues might find this chapter uncomfortable. Though it will provide a certain degree of symmetry to the story as a whole, it is not required reading and can be skipped. I'm not sure when I'll be done with the NEXT chapter, but I'm confident it won't take as long as this one took.

Another year passed. Then a second, and a third, and then they were coming up on four years since the assault on Genisys. Four years and still no signs of a Skynet resurgence. Four years and still no John.

For a while, it had been by design. Sarah loved Kyle. And maybe, in a perfect world, if they were just two strangers who met like millions of other strangers meet every day, she might have been excited to have a child with him. But she hadn’t been.

Whether it was the thought of being a predestined incubator for a hero or the fear of raising a man who would become a monster or the anxiety of everything changing, she just wasn’t ready.

There were times along the way that she thought she might be. She felt a love for John already just based on the stories Pops and Kyle had told — a love that eventually superseded that thing they’d fought — but the idea of bringing him into a world with so much potential to be so horrible, of possibly burdening him with a task so hard and painful was one she could barely bear.

And then the fifth year arrived. Half a decade with no threat.

As the fears she’d nursed for nearly her whole life began to ease, they’d started trying -- breaking out the pregnancy test Pops had gotten her for her birthday years ago. When it was negative, they tried again, repeating the process for months. They all turned up negative.

Kyle was clearly distressed. More than almost anything, he wanted to hold something that was a piece of each of them, the life they shared and the one he remembered from the days before the first bombs fell.

Sarah had never felt like more of a failure. Even when she was just a girl struggling to clean, load and use their arsenal, she never failed. She was just learning. In those days, Pops had been able to help her. Teach her the proper, most efficient ways to complete a task. But this wasn’t something her robot grandpa could help her with.

Eventually, they’d visited doctors. Kyle wasn’t supposed to travel through time twice, and Sarah wasn’t supposed to have done it at all. What if that choice had left them broken?  
But all their tests came back fine. They were two young people in their prime.

“Just give it more time,” they’d said.

It happened once. 

A faint pink plus appeared, and Sarah cut out early from work one day and went to the doctor by herself. It was real, and all she wanted was to run home and leap into Kyle’s arms. But something made her wait. Whether it was the last vestiges of a long-ago memory, a bout of precognition or the hand of a god she wasn’t sure she believed in, Sarah stayed quiet.

Kyle had been at work the day she’d bled.

Sarah tried to put on a brave face. But she’d been putting on brave faces for nearly 20 years, locking down all her sadness and her fear and her pain. The mission had required it. But there was no mission anymore. There was just her and Kyle and Pops, and even though she tried, when she stepped out of the bathroom, Pops looked at her and cocked his head.

“What’s wrong, Sarah?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a sob as she collapsed into Pops’s arms. For a Terminator, he’d gotten really good at hugs, and it made it all the easier for Sarah to tell him through wracked breaths what had happened.

“You should go to the doctor,” Pops said when she was finished. Sarah glanced up at the clock.

“Can we go tomorrow? Kyle will be home soon, and I…”

“You don’t wish to tell him?”

“No.” Sarah stepped away from Pops and began to pace the room. “No. It’d break his heart to know how close we got. I can’t…I can’t do…” she stopped and sent both fists crashing down onto the dining table. “Why can’t I do this?!” she yelled. 

She sank into a chair, holding her head in one hand and drawing the fingers of her other hand through spilled salt before righting the toppled shakers. Pops stood still and silent, watching her, weighing if her question was rhetorical or actual.

“Why can’t I do this?” she whispered. Pops sat next to her and took her hand in his.

“Sarah Connor, it may take time, but all tests indicate you CAN do this.”

She snorted and pulled her hand away.

“Those doctors don’t know what we know. What we’ve done,” Sarah said “Even if that’s true, how do you know it’ll be John?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if there was only one chance — that one moment that we were together — for John to be made? And we didn’t, and everything’s changed, and what if it NEVER happens, and it’s because of me?! Because I couldn’t…because I wouldn’t…”

The door to their apartment closed with a click and Sarah whipped her head around, a dormant instinct sending her hand to a pistol that was no longer holstered at her thigh. Kyle was standing in the hallway, his lunchbox in one hand and his tool belt dangling from the other. Unshed tears were in his eyes.

"I don’t believe that,” he said.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” He dropped his work supplies and crossed the room to Sarah, kneeling at her feet. “Sarah, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s not going to happen. But I know it’s not your fault. It’s not mine. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just what is. And however the future turns out, we’ll deal with it. Together.”


End file.
